GMax Question - Cross Section modelling

[Firebar]

In Gmax it is in theory possible to model mesh surfaces from splines, I've been looking at how to do this and have been unsecessful. Can anyone enlighten me on the process?

Cheers,
Matt

[Lionheart]

Hey Matt,

It is how I make all fuselages now. It makes making a fuselage terribly easy.

Basically, here's what I do;

* Make 'one side' of the fuselage (duplicate later to make the other side and weld).
* Try to use the same Splines throughout, try to at least keep the number of Vertices in a Spline the same. You can scale, squash, and stretch Splines to make them all run down the fuselage in beautiful order by taking the time and scaling them all.
* To enable uniform scaling, on the first Spline, center the Gizmo, then move the Gizmo to the 'center' of the airplane. This way, when you scale the width (from top view) it will scale to the middle, so you dont have to move it over to adjust its location. Same for height (usually).
* When you go to 'Attach' all the Splines together, start from one end and work your way to the other. DO NOT GO OUT OF ORDER. If you do, the mesh will jump back and fourth and twist up when you Surface it. If you forget a middle Spline, start over again from the previous save point.
* When you go to make a Surface, first Attach all Splines, then click Cross Section in the Flyout. Then click Surface. In Surface, make your 'Noise' selection to 0.0. (I think it starts at 3.0 or something). Then click Iterations at the bottom and go to 0 or 1 Iterations. If the Polygons are inside out, click on Flip Normals.

Voila! That easy, and incredibly fast.

I usually make at least 2 stages of complete Splines. The first one is a warm up and shows me the 'shape' and feel of the fuselage. Then from there, you can more easily make a new Spline fuselage with a tuned amount of vertices right on top of the previous model, which is easier then making the Splines (aligning) on a drawing.

I now usually make all parts from splines as well. You can easily outline a part in a Spline, click 'Add Poly', save at Editable Poly, then click Polygon mode, and extrude. Voila. Instant part. Great for starting a wing. From there, extrude several endcaps out of it and you are done.

You can also build out Wingtips with Splines.


:ernae:

Bill

These are some examples. The Vanship was able to have its wild side profile done in extremely quick order via Splines. Same with its slightly sophisticated wheel pants. (Used Taper several times to get that to shape right, along with moving Vertice rows around, having started with a Spline side only).

The Epic Victory fuselage is done the same way. I may redo it again to get the amount of polygons 'just right' on the sides. (Has a very sophisticated tail area and belly 'wing root' tank area also, which all need to blend in single, smoothed Splines. Thats why I make a second and even a third Spline structure 'over' the first fuselage. Easier then drawings...

Below, you can see how the Kodiak started out extremely simple. Remember if you go ultra simple in your Splines, you can easily tune the mesh quicker. (I am always tuning the mesh, moving vertices around after a surface is done).

Some interesting points; Picture one and two show you the early version fuselage of the Victory on the back side. (Note the miss-match at the top center line accross its top).

On the Vanship, almost all parts were Splined. Even the front suspension beams, the rounded hub things on the front. All round parts, including the engine assembly and the bell cone behind it, and wheels and hub parts were make from a Spline, then Lathe tool. The hoop tubing is a single Spline, then turned on Mesh Visible, adjusted diameter and number of sides, and Voila, saved as Poly and done...

Always expect to redo the mesh a bit though when you Surface the Fuselage, wings, etc.

[Baron von Blutwurst]

very succinct Bill...I'm betting he's buried deep in Gmax as we speak. :D

[Firebar]

close, I was finishing a Macbeth essay. :banghead:

Thanks for that Bill.

When you say attach do you mean physically attach using the right click menu or is there a roll-out for it?

ahh i think i'm getting the hang of it....

[Baron von Blutwurst]

Click on Line01 and down the menu you will see the Attach button. Click H to bring up your parts list and click the next sequenced line Line02..click Ok. Repeat in order until you have nothing but Line01 left in your inventory.

Cheers
Randy

[Lionheart]

close, I was finishing a Macbeth essay. :banghead:

When you say attach do you mean physically attach using the right click menu or is there a roll-out for it?




Hey, no worries. Macbeth is a sophisticated play... Try reading Beowulf, lol.. eeeks! :kilroy:


When you have your first Spline (end one that will be the Attach starter point), and you look at the control panel on the right, you should see a button that says 'Attach'. Click on that, button is highlighted yellow which means its armed and any Splines you touch/click on, will be attached to the Spline you presently have selected.

Remember, all in order through the row. Save in many levels so you can take back steps in case they dont work like you want and you wish to make adjustments.

Once you get the trick down to how it all works, where the buttons are, etc, then this only takes you moments and you have a fuselage side. You can do 3 or 5 in a row just to check out the power of how it works and the speed of it all.

The real secret though is to put the Gizmo for each Spline at the center (core) edge (where the middle of the plane will be). Once the first one has this, then you can pull clones out of it (hold down Shift key and with Move tool, pull out copies of the original Spline), and line them up in a grid evenly spaced or spaced where they will work best. Then go through and use singular scale on side view, getting them alinged on outer edges, then top view pulling them in for a nice outer edge lineup.

For a background Grid template, try making a Poly and while its in raw early part mode format, program in the amount of sections for it to have. Go to wire frame view to see them. Make sure it spans the length of your fuselage. Then when you make clones of Spline ribs, line them up with the Poly grid template. :d

Also note you can add Vertice points to edges in a Spline, so to start a wing root, you can do some changed to existing Splines, or just make a new one over the top of the original with the aditional bump area, etc.

Usually people make these from cylinders, but dang, this route is so far faster its scary.

Have fun!

:ernae:


Bill

[Firebar]

Thanks, I figured out the attachment bit after some experimentation.

I'm not building from a 3-view in GMax, i'm building from a three view in another program (it allows more freedom but is not geared towards mesh surfaces) and then importing the splines. The 3-view also shows more clearly in the program i'm using.

Thanks for the help!

Matt

[Lionheart]

Hey Matt,

Roger that. Glad I could help out.


You know, I only work in one window in Gmax, and almost always in rotated view (3D view). You dont have to use multiple windows in Gmax. I never do... (never.. well, every two years, on a 4th tuesday, I go there to make sure all the windows are still there. ) :d

[OBIO]

I really wish I understood a single thing that any of you gents just said. Gmax....my next big project once things in my life settle down a bit. CFS2 needs new planes built for it...and I think I might just be insane enough to give it a try. Always room for another sim addiction....first there was skins, then conversions, then DP files, then panels....now air and config files (still got a lot to learn about them..but getting better).

OBIO

[Lionheart]

I really wish I understood a single thing that any of you gents just said. Gmax....my next big project once things in my life settle down a bit. CFS2 needs new planes built for it...and I think I might just be insane enough to give it a try. Always room for another sim addiction....first there was skins, then conversions, then DP files, then panels....now air and config files (still got a lot to learn about them..but getting better).

OBIO


Get this....

Basically a model consists of dots... Each dot is a coordinate. Every three coordinates have a 'skin'. Every skin has a material and a mapping. Think of the 'mapping' on it as a sheet of wall paper, and the material being the 'ink'. You can have a bunch of these skins stretched on the dots to be linked together to form an 'object', (such as a fuselage).

That is basically what the computer sees.

Add animations and effects, light mapping (night time), etc, and you are beginning to see the big picture, (3D objects made of dots and triangles on a 2D screen).

Crazy.......

Dot............................Vertice
Skin/Triangle................Polygon
Wallpaper....................UVW Map
Ink.............................Material
Dots with no skin..........Spline (appear like a drawing of a constellation, some lines connecting some dots).

:d


EDIT: I wonder how God see's humans and the Universe.. (Well, I started with these dots. If you connect a whole bunch of them together, you get a 'thing' such as a rock or a pool of water. Then......


Bill

[Firebar]

Here's what I ended up with after skinning the fuselage

58814

[Lionheart]

Hey! Good job man!

:ernae:

Not that difficult, is it.

Cool design. Something like what Luigi Colani would make.

[Baron von Blutwurst]

looks good firebar. How you wiil want to select Smooth with Highlights and Edged faces from the viewport drop down. Then go to polygon sub-object and click Edit Triangulation from the menu below that. This will allow you to make sure all highlights are uniform so you dont get strange smoothing glitches.

Cheers
Randy

[Firebar]

So where abouts is edit triangulation?


Hey! Good job man!

:ernae:

Not that difficult, is it.

Cool design. Something like what Luigi Colani would make.

Thanks, its a Scaled Composites (now Northrop Grumman - I think) Proteus. looks more like it like this.

59095

And the real thing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Scaled_Composites_Proteus_in_flight_1.jpg

[Lionheart]

Very cool!


That particular design is pretty wild. They have sure made some incredible and diverse designs lately. I have heard they do one fresh, new design a year, since 1986.

Edit Triangulation is only with Edititable Mesh. Save the object (fuselage) in Editable Mesh, scroll down to the bottom and youll see a wide button that says Edit Tringulation. It must be done in Polygon mode and can change the surface effect, (for like rounded window cutouts, when you have odd shading occurring, you can adjust the direction of polygons).


You'll have to keep up posted on this beauty!



Bill

[ananda]

Hi Bill,

I know this is a very old thread but I'm finding it very useful.

One question. How can I set all of the vertices shown below to exactly the same height? I have tried using vertex properties but it doesn't allow me to type in a value.

http://img861.imageshack.us/img861/3268/vertexheights.jpg (http://img861.imageshack.us/i/vertexheights.jpg/)

[Tako_Kichi]

There are a couple of ways of achieving your goal:

1. Select each vertice in turn and use the 'Align' tool to align them (in the vertical axis) with a vertice at the required height.

2. Select a vertice at the required height using the 'Select and Move' tool then select and copy the height data in the dimension field at the bottom of the screen. Now select each vertice you want to move in turn and paste the height data into the correct dimension field and hit 'Enter'.

There is no way that I know of to align a group of vertices in one operation because as soon as you select more than two vertices the software will adopt the 'average' or mid point and will try to align that to the destination point.

[ananda]

Thanks Larry.

What I did was to select each vertex, hit F12 and typed in the height value. I guess that is the same as typig the value into the coordinate readout at the bottom.

George

[Firebar]

Wow this was so long ago, sadly lost to a hard drive crash that mesh was. I think I might start it again :).

Good luck with your modelling!